CliChe Guevara:People who fear guns use the term 'Assault Rifle' in a way that means 'anything that looks scary, regardless of function or purpose'. These are not actually assault rifles they are speaking of, but the term sounds scary enough they get addicted to saying it. I have seen .22 squirrel rifles referred to as 'assault rifles' because they had a black synthetic stock instead of a classic wood one. I have seen a speaker that used so broadly as to to mean 'any firearm with a magazine' (so anything other than a revolver I guess?)

There's no reason why we shouldn't be able to own 'assault rifles', anyway. It's like we as citizens are considered too untrustworthy to be allowed the right.

I for one think we should make sports cars illegal. You might speed and cause accidents on the roads, so we should do everything we can to prevent those tragedies.

utahraptor2:There's no reason why we shouldn't be able to own 'assault rifles', anyway. It's like we as citizens are considered too untrustworthy to be allowed the right.

I for one think we should make sports cars illegal. You might speed and cause accidents on the roads, so we should do everything we can to prevent those tragedies.

Comparisons between guns and vehicles aren't that easy to make. Yeah, both can be used as a deadly weapon, but you can't fit one into a packed building very easily. You may be a responsible gun owner and if that's the case, I wouldn't mind if you owned 500 guns, or how deadly they were, my problem is making them so readily available, and so lethal, that some fall into the hands of time bombs. This is a preventable thing and we can do things to prevent it besides waiting for the shooting to start.

enochianwolf:Girion47: The sheer amount of death attributed to heart disease from obesity and you're worried about gun control?

You're priorities are whacko.

I'm not worried about the pleasant fat couple from down the street clogging their arteries with salt and fat in the mall food court, I'm worried about them getting their heads blown off by another psycho with a weapon trying to become famous.

Holmes, the Aurora shooter, purchased his assault rifle and body armor legally, yet was considered mentally unbalanced by his psychiatrist, just not diagnosed. I'll agree with Dimensio's point about providing better mental healthcare in this country as a good alternative to stricter gun control, but I believe we need a good measure of both. For example, anyone with an (R) next to their name in office is a guaranteed rubber stamp for looser gun regulations and less federal support for mental healthcare

/so vote democrat

1. He didn't have body armor. He had a "tactical" vest on.2. There are laws in place preventing people with reported mental illness that should prevent them from getting a firearm. Seeing as he wasn't reported as such, that is not a failure of the gun laws.

Girion47:enochianwolf: Dimensio: enochianwolf: Great, another attention whore who just couldn't help himself and had to ruin innocent lives for his narcissistic, masturbatory power trip. glad he's dead, though maybe a couple other people wouldn't be had it been more difficult for him to get a "military-style" weapon. Assault weapons ban is apparently violating the 2nd amendment.

I wonder what George Washington would say if he saw teenagers walking down the street armed with AR-15s loaded with hv mags. And hey, it doesnt specify what kind of arms, lets go ahead and theorize its an NRA members wet dream and give the teens a few fragmentation grenades and flamethrowers for good measure.

You are correct; clearly, his act of double-homicide would have been acceptable had he utilized a non-tactical Mini-14 to commit it instead of the AR-15 that he was reported to have used.

/Given the low body count, he may actually have used a Mini-14.

It wouldn't have been acceptable if he used a Tickle-me Elmo doll, but the chances of survival for the people in the mall would have been much higher. What i'm saying is people should have to go through more bureaucratic b.s. to get a gun than anything else in their lives, yet ironically you can be diagnosed with mental illness and still get one no problem, and not just a little pea-shooter, you can get serious hardware as a paranoid schizo, and the NRA sees this as freedom

The sheer amount of death attributed to heart disease from obesity and you're worried about gun control?

You're priorities are whacko.

Well, here's the thing from my perspective - you get at least a measure of control in most heart disease cases. You get time to wrap things up, maybe say some good-byes (dying still sucks, and yes, it sometimes happens out of the blue, but still, even in those cases, the corner says, 'heart disease, and at least it makes sense).

When a twit with a gun shots you in a mall, a school, a theatre, as collateral damage in a drive by, a mosque in Wisconsin, or the myriad other ways of being murdered by a gun as a regular, average joe, joan, or child, you have no control at all. And it never makes sense, ever.

So yeah, I'd say you need some gun control. I'd go further to say that a mall goers right to the pursuit of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" trumps the right to bear an assault or large magazine weapon.

It's about time that someone balanced the aspects of the constitution against each other, and stopped trying to pander to those who want to hold the 2nd amendment as more sancrosact than the rest of it.

It also amuses me greatly that the 2nd amendment is the one that proponents are willing to broaden the scope of to include weaponry that no one in 1776 could have forseen, but are stone cold against broadening 'all men are created equal' to actually make everyone equal. Kinda like the people who quote Leviticus as a reason to condem the gheys, but still eat shellfish. Weird.

RidgeRunner5:1. He didn't have body armor. He had a "tactical" vest on.2. There are laws in place preventing people with reported mental illness that should prevent them from getting a firearm. Seeing as he wasn't reported as such, that is not a failure of the gun laws.

Yep, I was proven wrong upthread. Doesn't necessarily mean current laws are sufficient, or current standards of mental health awareness.

llachlan:It also amuses me greatly that the 2nd amendment is the one that proponents are willing to broaden the scope of to include weaponry that no one in 1776 could have forseen, but are stone cold against broadening 'all men are created equal' to actually make everyone equal. Kinda like the people who quote Leviticus as a reason to condem the gheys, but still eat shellfish. Weird.

Upon what occasion have I expressed "stone cold" opposition to expanding equality? In which posting did I quote Leviticus as justification for condemnation of homosexuals? Was it in one of the numerous postings in which I explicitly advocated legal recognition of same-sex marriage?

utahraptor2:enochianwolf: Great, another attention whore who just couldn't help himself and had to ruin innocent lives for his narcissistic, masturbatory power trip. glad he's dead, though maybe a couple other people wouldn't be had it been more difficult for him to get a "military-style" weapon. Assault weapons ban is apparently violating the 2nd amendment.

I wonder what George Washington would say if he saw teenagers walking down the street armed with AR-15s loaded with hv mags. And hey, it doesnt specify what kind of arms, lets go ahead and theorize its an NRA members wet dream and give the teens a few fragmentation grenades and flamethrowers for good measure.

I live with my mom. You need practice, padawan.

Agreed, has to be a troll.

I mean come on...teenagers walking around with AR-15s? Its that kind of comment that completely invalidates any attempt to make a logical argument.

Then theres the fact that the AR-15 is a civilian gun based on and styled after the military M-16 and M4. The AR being semi-auto only, the M series being full auto.

MaliFinn:divgradcurl: OtherLittleGuy: Tat'dGreaser: Cool, so can we shut down 4chan now?

No, we have to fire 4chan and ban pictures from teh internets. Because, like, children.

you guys are both small time. the real problem is books. we must eliminate them immediately or whack jobs like tom clancy will continue to give these misguided people bad ideas. personally, i blame him for every mall shooting since 2003 teeth of the tiger

/i've got my salamander outfit all ready to go, just let me know when

2003? Hah. Schwarzenegger was shooting up shopping malls back in 1985. Commando

enochianwolf:utahraptor2: There's no reason why we shouldn't be able to own 'assault rifles', anyway. It's like we as citizens are considered too untrustworthy to be allowed the right.

I for one think we should make sports cars illegal. You might speed and cause accidents on the roads, so we should do everything we can to prevent those tragedies.

Comparisons between guns and vehicles aren't that easy to make. Yeah, both can be used as a deadly weapon, but you can't fit one into a packed building very easily. You may be a responsible gun owner and if that's the case, I wouldn't mind if you owned 500 guns, or how deadly they were, my problem is making them so readily available, and so lethal, that some fall into the hands of time bombs. This is a preventable thing and we can do things to prevent it besides waiting for the shooting to start.

I own quite a few firearms. Big ones, small ones, antiques and modern "assault weapons". Everyone of them are equally deadly in the right hands, but not one of them is half as dangerous in my hands as a cell phone is in the hands of a soccer mom driving a mini van.

People kill people. It's been happening since the advent of the human race. The only reasonable thing that can be done to prevent it is to be equipped and prepared to defend yourself in the extremely unlikely event that someone tries to kill or harm you.

Restricting firearms does two things: it makes firearms ownership classist and only available to wealthy people, and it makes firearms theft and sales even more lucrative for organized crime than it already is.

llachlan:Girion47: enochianwolf: Dimensio: enochianwolf: Great, another attention whore who just couldn't help himself and had to ruin innocent lives for his narcissistic, masturbatory power trip. glad he's dead, though maybe a couple other people wouldn't be had it been more difficult for him to get a "military-style" weapon. Assault weapons ban is apparently violating the 2nd amendment.

I wonder what George Washington would say if he saw teenagers walking down the street armed with AR-15s loaded with hv mags. And hey, it doesnt specify what kind of arms, lets go ahead and theorize its an NRA members wet dream and give the teens a few fragmentation grenades and flamethrowers for good measure.

You are correct; clearly, his act of double-homicide would have been acceptable had he utilized a non-tactical Mini-14 to commit it instead of the AR-15 that he was reported to have used.

/Given the low body count, he may actually have used a Mini-14.

It wouldn't have been acceptable if he used a Tickle-me Elmo doll, but the chances of survival for the people in the mall would have been much higher. What i'm saying is people should have to go through more bureaucratic b.s. to get a gun than anything else in their lives, yet ironically you can be diagnosed with mental illness and still get one no problem, and not just a little pea-shooter, you can get serious hardware as a paranoid schizo, and the NRA sees this as freedom

The sheer amount of death attributed to heart disease from obesity and you're worried about gun control?

You're priorities are whacko.

Well, here's the thing from my perspective - you get at least a measure of control in most heart disease cases. You get time to wrap things up, maybe say some good-byes (dying still sucks, and yes, it sometimes happens out of the blue, but still, even in those cases, the corner says, 'heart disease, and at least it makes sense).

When a twit with a gun shots you in a mall, a school, a theatre, as collateral damage in a drive by, ...

That's some nice false equivalency you have going on. So because I think gun control is absurd because it focuses on a small amount of deaths I'm against equality all of a sudden?

1) he didn't have an 'assault rifle'2) he didn't have body armorand just to note,3) most of the damage was done by a normal shotgun, from pellet scatter (hence why a very, VERY large number were listed as shot, yet many were treated and released quickly, even the same night)4) the reason he gave up andd tried to flee, and did not standoff with the police as planned, nor kill more people, was that his so-called 'assault rifle' jammed from trying to use a high capacity snail magazine (which are notoriously unreliable), and combined with lack of training, he broke the weapon attempting to clear it.

So, just to be clear, the Aurora shooter was using a shotgun. Ironically, the only thing mitigating the damage he could do was the attempt to use a high capacity magazine in a rifle.

enochianwolf:evilmousse: I wonder what George Washington would say if he saw teenagers walking down the street armed with AR-15s loaded with hv mags.

Oh my god look at these horseless carriages and buildings that touch the sky! I seriously need to get some of those dentures to replace this whale bone shiat. Where do y'all keep your slaves? Oh, and avoid entangling alliances, it'll lead to shiat like ww1.

...I was speaking figuratively.. the point is the 2nd amendment was created during a time in which weapons were much less lethal, and the ability to have mass-shootings from a single individual wasn't really possible.

"Disarm those rabble rousers before they hurt somebody: shoot them if they resist."

Prank Monkey:enochianwolf: utahraptor2: I think that what it boils down to are complacent Americans who don't want to take responsibility for their own personal defense. They're terrified of having to stand up and protect themselves if necessary, and so they'd rather forfeit their liberty and its associated responsibility than show some character and take responsibility.

What I find interesting is how these individuals can advocate legalization of controlled substances because Government restriction doesn't work; and in the same breath call for Government restriction of firearms. It's cognitive dissonance at its finest.

You realize that in the confusion of a public shooting, if every person had a gun, it could become easy for someone, including the police, to lose track of who the real shooter is, thereby possibly increasing the tragedy of such an event. Sure, it could also end the shooting really quickly and possibly prevent the tragedy, but the variable you're increasing is the amount of deadly weapons in a given area. Having a shootout isn't *necessarily* as safe for everyone around as fleeing and hiding, but this obviously depends on the environment and people density of a given area. I don't necessarily feel like your average person should worry about having to defend themselves against gunfire, sure it can happen to anyone and does happen, but I'll say that we seem to have this happen more than some other places.

As for drugs, keep the deadly stuff like heroine away from people but let the harmless, cannabis, get taxed. Because hey, free money and the cartels aren't getting paid. Not sure how it's cognitive dissonance to see weed as being ok enough not to throw thousands of people in jail each year for it, and firearms as dangerous enough to be highly regulated.

I agree with you about the weed. That being said, I can't think of one instance where what you are saying has happened. Link?

What actually tends to happen is that the homeowner, in possession of a legal firearm, is shot by the police when they come to raid the wrong house, and the homeowner is trying to protect his family from an unknown (to him) threat. Or the home owner shoots his own kid in the middle of the night. Rare, but it does happen, and far too often.

I'd be happy with a ban on large magazines, but honestly, I can't for the life of me figure out why the hell ya'all need to walk around armed. More of you walk around with conceal and carry firearms than Hamas.

And no offense, but given the general state of abrogating of personal responsibility for ones actions, and lack of impulse control I see around me, I'd be happier if guns at least had to stay in the home.

enochianwolf:CliChe Guevara: So, just to be clear, the Aurora shooter was using a shotgun. Ironically, the only thing mitigating the damage he could do was the attempt to use a high capacity magazine in a rifle.

Well it's good to know we were spared further loss of life, I guess!

Fortunately, gun control advocates are working to ensure that future rampages result in much greater death through prohibition of civilian ownership of unreliable firearm magazines.

enochianwolf:CliChe Guevara: So, just to be clear, the Aurora shooter was using a shotgun. Ironically, the only thing mitigating the damage he could do was the attempt to use a high capacity magazine in a rifle.

Well it's good to know we were spared further loss of life, I guess!

I suspect he turned the gun on himself when the reality of what he was doing hit him.

There's more people alive now than there's ever been, and greater gun ownership than ever, but violence has been on the decrease for over a decade now.

llachlan:What actually tends to happen is that the homeowner, in possession of a legal firearm, is shot by the police when they come to raid the wrong house, and the homeowner is trying to protect his family from an unknown (to him) threat. Or the home owner shoots his own kid in the middle of the night. Rare, but it does happen, and far too often.

llachlan:What actually tends to happen is that the homeowner, in possession of a legal firearm, is shot by the police when they come to raid the wrong house, and the homeowner is trying to protect his family from an unknown (to him) threat.

I eagerly await documentation of the frequency of such incidents.

Or the home owner shoots his own kid in the middle of the night. Rare, but it does happen, and far too often.

In 2010 (the last year for which data is available), 606 unintended deaths occurred as a result of firearms usage. As this accounts for all age ranges and all causes, the scenario that you describe is necessarily a smaller subset of those incidents. Clearly, this is "far too often".

I'd be happy with a ban on large magazines,

What is a "large magazine"? Is my twenty-round Saiga-12 drum a "large magazine"? It is physically larger than my 50-round AR-15 .22LR drum magazine.

but honestly, I can't for the life of me figure out why the hell ya'all need to walk around armed. More of you walk around with conceal and carry firearms than Hamas.

And no offense, but given the general state of abrogating of personal responsibility for ones actions, and lack of impulse control I see around me, I'd be happier if guns at least had to stay in the home.

Your concerns would be more reasonable if concealed weapon permit holders did not commit crime at a rate lower than that of the general adult population.

Dimensio:Fortunately, gun control advocates are working to ensure that future rampages result in much greater death through prohibition of civilian ownership of unreliable firearm magazines.

It's almost as if it's... better? for everyone to have extended mags. It's actually safer for the victims if the shooter has more bullets in the magazine, you just have to assume they won't work as they were designed.

llachlan: What actually tends to happen is that the homeowner, in possession of a legal firearm, is shot by the police when they come to raid the wrong house, and the homeowner is trying to protect his family from an unknown (to him) threat. Or the home owner shoots his own kid in the middle of the night. Rare, but it does happen, and far too often.

Are you aware of what the words "rare" and "often" mean?

When the goal is "never", both "rare" and "too often" can be applicable.

Dimensio:llachlan: It also amuses me greatly that the 2nd amendment is the one that proponents are willing to broaden the scope of to include weaponry that no one in 1776 could have forseen, but are stone cold against broadening 'all men are created equal' to actually make everyone equal. Kinda like the people who quote Leviticus as a reason to condem the gheys, but still eat shellfish. Weird.

Upon what occasion have I expressed "stone cold" opposition to expanding equality? In which posting did I quote Leviticus as justification for condemnation of homosexuals? Was it in one of the numerous postings in which I explicitly advocated legal recognition of same-sex marriage?

Umm. dude, I used the terms: proponents, and people. Note I did not say, all proponents, every proponent, all people or every person. It is interesting to me though, that of all the things I said, you homed in on that. I apologize if you thought my deliberately using language to avoid tarring all birds rather than the applicable subset, meant you. And I'm sorry if I somehow offended you by trying to avoid just this situation. I was actually trying to engage in a discussion that didn't get reduced to ad hominem.

enochianwolf:Dimensio: Fortunately, gun control advocates are working to ensure that future rampages result in much greater death through prohibition of civilian ownership of unreliable firearm magazines.

It's almost as if it's... better? for everyone to have extended mags. It's actually safer for the victims if the shooter has more bullets in the magazine, you just have to assume they won't work as they were designed.

A more realistic assessment is that the legal availability of "extended" firearm magazines has neither demonstrably increased rates of violent crime nor demonstrably increased the number of casualties in any single high-publicized mass-shooting event.

Dimensio:A more realistic assessment is that the legal availability of "extended" firearm magazines has neither demonstrably increased rates of violent crime nor demonstrably increased the number of casualties in any single high-publicized mass-shooting event.

Shooter A has a semi-automatic weapon with 12 bullets in the magazine, he has 2 spare magazines with him. He fires upon a crowd at rate of 2 shots per second, and it takes him 3.5 seconds to reload. Within 25 seconds he has fired 36 bullets.

Shooter B has the same semi-automatic weapon but this one holds 18 bullets. Within 25 seconds he has fired 54 bullets.

also, I would like to know what purpose high-capacity magazines serve? Hunting? You should only need one shot. Self-defense? Unless you were being attacked by a large group of people, extremely unlikely unless you were in an area of gang violence, you should only need a standard issue magazine.

Dimensio:enochianwolf: Dimensio: Fortunately, gun control advocates are working to ensure that future rampages result in much greater death through prohibition of civilian ownership of unreliable firearm magazines.

It's almost as if it's... better? for everyone to have extended mags. It's actually safer for the victims if the shooter has more bullets in the magazine, you just have to assume they won't work as they were designed.

A more realistic assessment is that the legal availability of "extended" firearm magazines has neither demonstrably increased rates of violent crime nor demonstrably increased the number of casualties in any single high-publicized mass-shooting event.

enochianwolf:Dimensio: A more realistic assessment is that the legal availability of "extended" firearm magazines has neither demonstrably increased rates of violent crime nor demonstrably increased the number of casualties in any single high-publicized mass-shooting event.

Shooter A has a semi-automatic weapon with 12 bullets in the magazine, he has 2 spare magazines with him. He fires upon a crowd at rate of 2 shots per second, and it takes him 3.5 seconds to reload. Within 25 seconds he has fired 36 bullets.

Shooter B has the same semi-automatic weapon but this one holds 18 bullets. Within 25 seconds he has fired 54 bullets.

If you were unarmed, would you rather encounter Shooter A or B?

a decreased rate of fire doesn't matter if the shooter has more control over their accuracy. You seem to forget the whole "spray" aspect severely reduces the likelihood you'll cause fatalities.

enochianwolf:Dimensio: A more realistic assessment is that the legal availability of "extended" firearm magazines has neither demonstrably increased rates of violent crime nor demonstrably increased the number of casualties in any single high-publicized mass-shooting event.

Shooter A has a semi-automatic weapon with 12 bullets in the magazine, he has 2 spare magazines with him. He fires upon a crowd at rate of 2 shots per second, and it takes him 3.5 seconds to reload. Within 25 seconds he has fired 36 bullets.

Shooter B has the same semi-automatic weapon but this one holds 18 bullets. Within 25 seconds he has fired 54 bullets.

enochianwolf:utahraptor2: There's no reason why we shouldn't be able to own 'assault rifles', anyway. It's like we as citizens are considered too untrustworthy to be allowed the right.

I for one think we should make sports cars illegal. You might speed and cause accidents on the roads, so we should do everything we can to prevent those tragedies.

Comparisons between guns and vehicles aren't that easy to make. Yeah, both can be used as a deadly weapon, but you can't fit one into a packed building very easily. You may be a responsible gun owner and if that's the case, I wouldn't mind if you owned 500 guns, or how deadly they were, my problem is making them so readily available, and so lethal, that some fall into the hands of time bombs. This is a preventable thing and we can do things to prevent it besides waiting for the shooting to start.

If I was just crazy and wanted to kill people I could walk into a car dealership, sign a lease for the biggest SUV I could afford, and go mow down people on the sidewalk. The fact that it's hard to get one into a shopping mall is irrelevant.

About a quarter of all homicides are committed by a total stranger. The three largest motivations (in terms of total victims) for stranger-homicides are robbery, arguments, and gang killings, and when you subtract these out you have a grand total of 198 stranger-homicides per year (according to the FBI Crime in the United States report), and that's 198 TOTAL, the number of homicides involving a firearm is likely to be about 2/3 of that number, though I can't find any really concrete numbers. If you include Unknown and Not Specified causes you're still only looking at 1304 stranger-homicides per year, and remember that the gun-specific number is going to be 2/3 of that number (and the rifle-specific number is likely to be 1/10 or less the gun-specific number, or about 90 total rifle-stranger-homicides).

I'm not going to argue the finer points of gun control, but this allows us to put an upper bound of something like 100 completely random killings involving a rifle every year. This is on the order of (in terms of risk) being struck and killed by lightning (about 50 cases in the US every year) or being killed by falling icicles (about 100 cases in Russia every year). Thus, when you do want to argue about gun control, it's probably better to focus on the 9,900 other gun homicides committed every year predominantly in the course of felonies (about 1/3 of all homicides) and with handguns (9/10 or more of firearms crimes), rather than arguing about a very, very few clearly insane people doing insane things. The amount of time devoted to assault rifles and spree killers is completely out of whack with respect to true riskiness.

enochianwolf:Dimensio: A more realistic assessment is that the legal availability of "extended" firearm magazines has neither demonstrably increased rates of violent crime nor demonstrably increased the number of casualties in any single high-publicized mass-shooting event.

Shooter A has a semi-automatic weapon with 12 bullets in the magazine, he has 2 spare magazines with him. He fires upon a crowd at rate of 2 shots per second, and it takes him 3.5 seconds to reload. Within 25 seconds he has fired 36 bullets.

Shooter B has the same semi-automatic weapon but this one holds 18 bullets. Within 25 seconds he has fired 54 bullets.

If you were unarmed, would you rather encounter Shooter A or B?

I would rather encounter neither, though I prefer to assess actual reality rather than hypothetical speculation when discussing the merits (or lack thereof) of proposed restrictions upon liberty.

also, I would like to know what purpose high-capacity magazines serve? Hunting? You should only need one shot. Self-defense? Unless you were being attacked by a large group of people, extremely unlikely unless you were in an area of gang violence, you should only need a standard issue magazine.

Be aware that most "gun control" advocates are dishonest and define "high-capacity magazines" as any magazine of a capacity greater than ten, even though many standard firearm magazines exceed that capacity; a "normal" AR-15 magazine holds thirty rounds of ammunition, and the "standard" magazine packaged with the .22LR conversion kit that I purchased for my AR-15 holds twenty-six rounds of ammunition. The Glock 19, a popular handgun model, uses a fifteen round magazine as its standard.

"Large" magazines, exceeding the standard capacity for a given firearm, are typically novelty items, though they are useful for recreational target shooters. Most states restrict firearm magazines used for hunting to a relatively low limit, such as five or three rounds. Larger magazines are also unsuited for personal defense outside of the home because they reduce the ability to conceal a firearm.

Girion47:llachlan: Girion47: enochianwolf: Dimensio: enochianwolf: Great, another attention whore who just couldn't help himself and had to ruin innocent lives for his narcissistic, masturbatory power trip. glad he's dead, though maybe a couple other people wouldn't be had it been more difficult for him to get a "military-style" weapon. Assault weapons ban is apparently violating the 2nd amendment.

I wonder what George Washington would say if he saw teenagers walking down the street armed with AR-15s loaded with hv mags. And hey, it doesnt specify what kind of arms, lets go ahead and theorize its an NRA members wet dream and give the teens a few fragmentation grenades and flamethrowers for good measure.

You are correct; clearly, his act of double-homicide would have been acceptable had he utilized a non-tactical Mini-14 to commit it instead of the AR-15 that he was reported to have used.

/Given the low body count, he may actually have used a Mini-14.

It wouldn't have been acceptable if he used a Tickle-me Elmo doll, but the chances of survival for the people in the mall would have been much higher. What i'm saying is people should have to go through more bureaucratic b.s. to get a gun than anything else in their lives, yet ironically you can be diagnosed with mental illness and still get one no problem, and not just a little pea-shooter, you can get serious hardware as a paranoid schizo, and the NRA sees this as freedom

The sheer amount of death attributed to heart disease from obesity and you're worried about gun control?

You're priorities are whacko.

Well, here's the thing from my perspective - you get at least a measure of control in most heart disease cases. You get time to wrap things up, maybe say some good-byes (dying still sucks, and yes, it sometimes happens out of the blue, but still, even in those cases, the corner says, 'heart disease, and at least it makes sense).

When a twit with a gun shots you in a mall, a school, a theatre, as collateral damage in a ...

Holy cow. That is not what I said. At all. And is not what I meant. At all.

To clarify, I used proponents and people vs. every person and all proponents (for example). I meant to raise a discussion point, not to insult you, Dimensio or any one else who isn't in that camp. I wasn't actually trying to insult anyone.

Girion47:enochianwolf: Dimensio: A more realistic assessment is that the legal availability of "extended" firearm magazines has neither demonstrably increased rates of violent crime nor demonstrably increased the number of casualties in any single high-publicized mass-shooting event.

Shooter A has a semi-automatic weapon with 12 bullets in the magazine, he has 2 spare magazines with him. He fires upon a crowd at rate of 2 shots per second, and it takes him 3.5 seconds to reload. Within 25 seconds he has fired 36 bullets.

Shooter B has the same semi-automatic weapon but this one holds 18 bullets. Within 25 seconds he has fired 54 bullets.

If you were unarmed, would you rather encounter Shooter A or B?

a decreased rate of fire doesn't matter if the shooter has more control over their accuracy. You seem to forget the whole "spray" aspect severely reduces the likelihood you'll cause fatalities.

A slightly decreased rate of fire is also irrelevant when a shooter has maintained control over a situation; the amount of ammunition fired within twenty-five seconds is not relevant when a shooter has sufficient control over the situation (due to all targets being disarmed) for at least sixty seconds.

Such considerations also ignore that while mass murderers are often irrational and deranged, they are not stupid; limiting the ammunition capacity of their firearms is likely only to result in an alteration of their strategy.

Mr. Seung-Hui Cho utilized only standard-capacity magazines for the firearms that he used when committing mass murder, yet he killed more individuals than has any recently publicized shooter who did use "large capacity" magazines.

llachlan:To clarify, I used proponents and people vs. every person and all proponents (for example). I meant to raise a discussion point, not to insult you, Dimensio or any one else who isn't in that camp. I wasn't actually trying to insult anyone.

You should be aware that while the most visible (at least in the media) advocates of civilian firearm ownership rights may be "tea-party" aligned conservatives who generally oppose civil liberties (and whose use of hyperbole and fallacious reasoning are almost as damaging to the cause of civilian firearm ownership rights advocacy as are the demonstrable lies of the Brady Center and of the Violence Policy Center), the actual body of civilian firearm ownership rights advocacy is substantially more diverse.

also, I would like to know what purpose high-capacity magazines serve? Hunting? You should only need one shot. Self-defense? Unless you were being attacked by a large group of people, extremely unlikely unless you were in an area of gang violence, you should only need a standard issue magazine.

I should also mention that my .50 round .22LR magazine, used with my AR-15, has been useful for endurance testing: I typically am unable to empty more than half of the magazine's capacity before I experience difficulty keeping the rifle held properly.

Girion47:llachlan: What actually tends to happen is that the homeowner, in possession of a legal firearm, is shot by the police when they come to raid the wrong house, and the homeowner is trying to protect his family from an unknown (to him) threat. Or the home owner shoots his own kid in the middle of the night. Rare, but it does happen, and far too often.

Are you aware of what the words "rare" and "often" mean?

Yeah, I am. mea culpa on that. I think my brain got stuck on the fact that even happening rarely, the fact it happens at all, is still far too often.

factoryconnection: Handgun bans in DC and Chicago have shown to be useless at stopping crime, because the law-abiding listen but the lawless just get their weapons from no-ban zones just across the river (or whatever defines the border of Chicago).

It's not a river - it's a 10-foot-wide ring of waste fat and offal that roughly corresponds to the Cook County border.